Cultivating Life Long Readers - Lessons By The Lake

questioning, inferencing, connecting, synthesizing, visualizing, clarifying, summarizing, evaluating, predicting, comprehension crew

When I think back to my reading lessons in elementary school I remember an anthology and especially my teachers spiral bound teacher version of the anthology. Oh, how I dreamt of the day that I could be in the front of the class with that huge spiral book balanced on my hip teaching some amazing lesson! Here I am and after many years of teaching, I was never once given that teacher manual! I get to do something even better!

Now I am sure I became a lover of reading from the amazing lessons my elementary teachers taught me- it is just funny how differently I imagined myself teaching compared to how I am! I get to inspire a love of reading in my students through interactive meaningful lessons in such a fun way! I use concrete experiences to teach reading strategies with the Comprehension Crew!

Engaging Readers in the Strategies

Let me introduce you to my friends! I teach inferencing with a detective named Izzy looking for clues, evaluating with a judge named Evan making a decision, and predicting with a fortune named Presley who can see the future! Each skill has a character and a real life concrete experience demonstrating to students what the strategy really means and how we use it. To add to the engagement- I dress up as the character when I first introduce it! I NEVER expected to be teaching reading dressed as a chef! These little additions to our reading time create memories and associations that students never forget.

At the bottom I will link the blog posts where I share what mentor texts I have found to work well to teach each strategy!

Practicing the Strategies

Now we have their attention and they understand what the strategy means, but how do we get them to use it?! MODELING! During our shared reading time which is the first 10- 15 minutes of our reading time, I use the Comprehension Crew characters and their handy dandy props to model for the students how to apply each reading strategy. To read more about what our shared reading time looks like and is set up click here!

After I carefully and intentionally model the strategy, it is the students turn to try. They get to hold Quinn the Questioner’s microphone as they use her sentence starter, “I wonder.. (who, what, where, when, why how)” to ask their question about the text. The way that each character’s sentence starter empowers the students to correctly use the reading strategy is almost magical. I have had readers starting to tell me a random unrelated thought and I redirected them to use the sentence starter… suddenly a thoughtful inference emerged. MAGIC! Or maybe concrete, interactive reading instruction experiences- you decide!

Wondering how you can make this happen in your classroom? I wrote the lesson plan for you! AND you can use it with ANY book! Click here for the bundle of all the reading strategies. Connections is FREE for you to try!

We make the most of reading instruction by using our time to the fullest! It should be jammed pack with looking at and interacting with text. I have taught reading skills in isolation in a mini lesson format and it was such a struggle for students to transition that to using in texts independently.

Applying The Strategies

So now that the students understand the strategies and have practiced them in a whole group supported setting, we need to encourage them to use to in their everyday independent reading. Just because the Comprehension Crew character is not standing in front of them with their prop, doesn’t mean they are not there to prompt appropriate usage for a while!

I use photograph task cards and short paragraphs in my reading centers for student readers to practice applying the strategy. Photographs are SO powerful for practicing these strategies because it eliminates the students need to be able to access the text. I have had 2nd graders with reading levels ranging from Kindergarten to 4th grade. They can all access photographs the same! The picture below shows what these task cards look like!

Continuing to Reinforce

When students are still in the first week of learning a strategy or the first few times, I use the graphic organizers shown in the picture above that have the concrete prop of the character. Depending on the student I may use the version with the sentence starter included to support them further. Once using the strategy becomes more regular (which takes weeks or months of using this method and directly instructing/ modeling/ practicing the strategy) I move to graphic organizers without so many prompting supports. In my resource pack, I offer SO many graphic organizer choices. You will definitely be able to find the perfect one to help scaffold your student readers’ independence with using the reading strategies.

Long Term Planning

I use this strategy ALL YEAR long! Once students know all the characters, I rotate them in each week (one to three at a time) depending on the book. I may do predicting in shared reading but in guided reading we practice evaluating and in their independent center they are making inferences. The goal is to use them all consistently with various types of texts. Trust me, students do not get bored of the props and the interactive style of reading. They love it, I love it, it’s a win win! The teacher modeling also gets less and less as students master demonstrating the strategy themselves.

Every time they get to talk about text in a fun, meaningful way it is generating a positive association with reading and why it needs to be an interactive experience. You are shaping the reading habits they will utilize the rest of their lives! How cool is that!

Want to know even more?!

These links will take you to blog posts about how I teach each specific reading strategy. *They are also written in the order I teach them in!

These links will take you to the resources I have created to help you teach the reading strategies with the Comprehension Crew instructional method!

Click each link to see the mentor texts that I have found to be very effective to use when modeling and teaching the strategy.

Did I just throw way too many links at you?! I’m sorry! I just want you to have all the information you could be looking for right now! Please contact me with any questions or if I can help with a lesson, I would LOVE to talk to you about your lesson planning!!